Category: Windows Vista

When you shutdown Windows, it attempts to stop all the running processes. Some processes may become unresponsive and thus can cause unnecessary delay in the shutdown process. This delay is called the timeout after which Windows forcibly terminates these unresponsive processes. You can modify settings to decrease the timeout and thus shutdown Windows faster.

Windows Vista has a Windows Sidebar which has various gadgets inside it. By default, Windows Vista has three gadgets pre-added – Clock, Slideshow, Feed Headlines. If you want to add other gadgets then you can follow the steps given in this article.

Windows Vista has a Windows Sidebar which has various gadgets inside it. You can add new gadgets to this sidebar. If you do not like an added gadget then later you can remove it. If you want to remove a gadget then you can follow the steps given in this article.

By default, Windows Vista (and other versions of Windows) always shows some icons in the system tray like clock, volume control etc. If you do not want them to appear in the system tray, then you can choose to do so.

Windows Vista shows preview of a minimized window in the taskbar when you hover your mouse cursor over its icon in the taskbar. This requires extra processing power. If your computer is older or slower one then you can disable window thumbnail previews.

Some programs show their icon in the system tray – called notification icons. For example, almost all anti-virus software show their icon in the system tray. Windows Vista automatically decides to hide an icon if its not active or used often. You can manually change this behavior for any icon you like.

Everyone presses the power button on your computer to start their computer. But what happens when you press the power button in a running computer. If your computer run on Windows Vista, then you can choose what happens when you press the power button.

Windows Vista has a System Restore feature which can be used to restore your computer back to a specified point of time. But this can waste a lot of your useful hard disk space. Every time you install something, it creates a restore point. If your hard disk is small sized, you may want to turn off the System Restore.

Windows Vista has a tool to take the snapshots of the screen. This tool is called the Snipping Tool. It can be used to take the screenshots of an individual window or the whole screen and save the image in the PNG, JPEG or GIF formats.

Microsoft has dropped support for legacy help files with .HLP file extension in support for newer .CHM files. As a result, you cannot open the .HLP files on Windows Vista. If you double click on an .HLP file in Windows Vista, you would see an Open with… dialog instead of the actual help file.